CHAPTER XII.
BURNSIDE IS HIMSELF.
BUT what a different man was this!
Pete Burnside seemed a full two inches taller. The sullen droop of his mouth at the corners was gone, and a faint smile played there. His square jaw was thrust out a little more than usual, and the very color of his eyes seemed changed, now that he stood so erect, and no shadow fell from the brows across the pupils. And the bearing of his body, at once erect and easy, made him seem ten years younger and three fold stronger.
Indeed, with all the story which attached itself to his name, and with his hardy appearance, he might have passed for thirty-five years of age; but those who knew declared that he had managed to cram all the events of his life into less than thirty years. He now closed the door carefully behind him and looked about upon those who were in the room. In. his left hand he carried a saddlebag which seemed very heavy, and which clinked when it struck against his knee.
"I'm sure sorry that I give you a start," said he to the girl.
"I'll be the one that'll change your manners, son!" roared big Red Stanton. He pushed the cuffs of his coat away from his hairy wrists. "And I'll be having a lot to say to you, you gutter rat, you soft-headed fool, turning loose the men that I capture!"
The right hand of Pete Burnside raised, and the forefinger indicated Red Stanton, like the snap and drop of a revolver upon its target.
"You, over yonder," he said, "be quiet. I'll attend to you a little later on."
If he had struck Red over the head with a club and stunned him, he could not have changed the expression on the other's face more completely. With sagging jaw and with mouth agape, the giant leaned forward and stared at him, with dull eyes of wonder. Surprise had utterly unnerved Stanton.
"But I've come to give you my report first," said Pete, turning to the rancher and to Miriam.
Doc Peters was combing his mustache with furious speed, first to one side and then to the other side. Now he seized the hand of Pete and gripped it hard.
"I didn't know you before," he said. "I'd seen pictures of you, too, but I was a fool and didn't recognize you. While you were gone, we heard that you're Pete Burnside."
Pete lifted his head and looked across the room at Red Stanton, and the giant blinked stupidly back at him.
"That's my name," he admitted modestly. "And I—I-come up here to try to work this here case"
"That's a lie!" roared Red Stanton. "I had to drag him up here. He sure enough begged me not to take him up into these mountains, where there was so much trouble and"
"Be quiet!" snapped the rancher, turning suddenly upon Red. And that sudden reproof shocked the giant into another silence.
"I turned that rustler loose," said Pete in his quiet way, "because of me figuring that maybe he'd show me the way to get at Joe Daly. And I was right. He took me all the way up to Joe's camp."
"You don't mean to say" began the girl.
"What I mean to say," said Pete soberly, "is that there won't be any more trouble from Joe and his crowd."
He turned the saddlebag upside down.
"There's their guns—six guns. There's their wallets—six wallets, I guess. You might take that as a sign that they ain't going to bother you nor nobody else for a while!" And he could not help smiling his triumph into the face of the girl.
"Burnside," said the rancher, "it sort of staggers me. Say it over again. Tell me the straight of it. You mean to say that you got all six of 'em?"
"They pile out the door at me—they stood in the light of the lamp, and as they come out one by one"
"All lies—all lies!" thundered Red Stanton. He had risen and strode toward them.
"You," called Pete Burnside, "get out and stay gone. You hear me, Red?"
As he spoke he slipped his revolver from its holster and fired. The Colt was jerked from the hip of Red by the tearing impact of the bullet, sent to its mark with an uncanny accuracy. Red's big gun dropped heavily to he floor.
Red, disarmed by miracle, so it seemed, stood wavering an instant. He staggered, his arms stretched out, as though on the verge of lunging either forward or back. And then, clutching at the place where his revolver had been, with a sudden yell of terror he plunged through the door and raced into the night.
Pete Burnside, from the open door, fired into the dirt behind the fugitive. There was a hoarse shriek of fear, and the other bounded out of the lamplight. And so he disappeared swiftly into the blackness, like a nightmare disappearing from a sane mind, it seemed to Pete.
The rancher was laughing uproariously, and Miriam was clinging to his arm and looking out through the door at the renegade; but Pete Burnside did not so much as smile. Indeed, he had lost the habit of smiling forever.